About this blog

This is a window into the weird world of Anglicanism, as experienced on a Cathedral Close. Has anything much happened since Trollope's Barchester Chronicles? You will still see the 'canon in residence' hurrying across to choral Evensong, robes flapping, as the late bell chimes. But look carefully and you will notice he is checking the football score on his iPhone as he runs. This is also a writer's blog. It charts the agony and ecstasy of the novelist's life. And it's a fighter's blog. It charts the agony and ecstasy of the judo mat. Well, the agony, anyway.

Wednesday, 26 March 2014

It's an exciting day in the life of an author when the new book jacket arrives. Usually it is accompanied by a letter from the publisher, which says, 'Here's the jacket look for your novel. We hope you like it. Everyone here is really thrilled with it!' The author examines the design and bursts into tears, because it totally fails to capture the essence of their book. This feeling is registered with the publisher, who wrings his or her hands and says, 'Oh dear! That's a shame. Because we're really thrilled with it.' I.e. it's what you're getting. (This is what your contract means when it says you have the right of consultation over the cover.)

Well, happily, the process of finding the right look for Acts and Omissions has been a lot more pleasant and satisfying than that. For me, anyway. The design team at SPCK may tell a different tale, quite possibly one which includes phrases like 'high maintenance' and 'control freak'. But here's what we've decided on:

The painting--called 'Evensong'--is by Ian Scott Massie, and you know what? I'm really thrilled with it! I hope it tempts you to buy a copy for yourself, another for your friends and family, and one for every clergy person you know. Finally (just to be on the safe side so nobody feels left out) twenty more for everybody you can think of. Published on July 17th 2014.

Sunday, 23 March 2014

This is the text of my recent BBC Lent talk. Apologies, a bit of rogue highlighting has crept in for some reason. You will just have to imagine my Radio 4 voice.

CHRIST’S PASSION

As a novelist, I find it really annoying when other
people tell me how to write. If it’s a
copyeditor, I try to rein in my annoyance and address the list of queries I’ve
been sent about my latest manuscript. I
try not think, ‘Write your own book, if you’re so clever.’ One thing I am not prepared to tolerate,
though, is Word’s grammar check, with its impertinent squiggly green
underlining my prose. Fragment. Consider revising. I know
it’s a fragment. I did it on
purpose. For effect. Because I’m a writer.

Besides fragments, one of the things grammar check
sets its pedantic face against is the use of passive verb forms. ‘Instead of “Catherine was hit by the ball”, consider
“The ball hit Catherine”. Clearly, the
sensible thing is for me to disable grammar check before the laptop is hit by
Catherine, or—more properly—Catherine hits the laptop.

It turns out that no piece of prose, however
venerable, escapes the vigilance of grammar check. Take these words from the Creed: ‘He was
conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius
Pilate.’ For a livelier and more
persuasive sentence, consider rewriting your sentence using an active verb! ‘The Holy Ghost conceived Jesus. The Virgin Mary gave birth to him. Pontius Pilate made him suffer and crucified
him.’ But even if we do rewrite the
Creed in this livelier and more persuasive style, there’s still no getting
round the fact that Christ is passive here.
He is the object of the sentence, not the subject; the one things are
done to, not the one doing things.

This, of course, is what lies behind the church’s use
of the word ‘Passiontide’ for the period before Easter. The church has been using this language for
millennia. These days Christ’s ‘passion’
is taken to be a synonym for his ‘suffering’.
And of course, it is—but only if we understand ‘suffering’ in the right
way. Not pain and misery, so much as
suffering in the sense of ‘being on the receiving end of’ something. Being passive, not active. The word has shifted meaning in English; as
we can tell from that resonant but rather baffling phrase in the King James
Bible, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’. This means ‘let little children come’, allow
it to happen, suffer it to happen.
Rather than ‘little children are suffering’—which is what you might
suppose it meant, if you judged by the thriller and song titles which have
borrowed this phrase.

So what lies at the heart of Passiontide is not
suffering in the current sense of ‘enduring pain’—although there is certainly enough
of that—but Christ being on the receiving end of things, being done to. Christ relinquishing control and ending up in
the hands of others, completely at their mercy.
Suffering things to happen to him, not acting. This makes a surprising contrast to his
earlier ministry, which was packed with action and powerful deeds. He preached, he healed, he worked wonders, he
was in control—even of the wind and the waves.

This kind of Christ is a more straightforward
proposition. The sort of powerful charismatic
leader you’d follow to the ends of the earth.
Die for, even. The disciples were
up for that. They had swords. Peter even struck a blow and chopped an ear
off. But how can you rally to the cause
of a man who won’t fight, won’t stand up for himself, who in fact forbids you
to defend him and meekly suffers himself to be led off? That’s when the disciples abandoned him and
ran.

Passivity of this kind is unsettling. It verges on being a bit victim-y, which goes
against the grain. Even if I do fall
victim to something, I can sense a pressure to redefine myself as a survivor,
not a victim. To get closure, and regain
control of my own narrative. Nobody
wants to embrace a victim mentality.

Or do they? Do
we ever voluntarily hand ourselves over to others, and relinquish all control
of our destiny? Well, if you’ve ever
undergone surgery which required a general anaesthetic, the answer is yes. If you have ever waddled, vastly pregnant
into a labour ward, the answer is yes.
You might think you’re in
control when you’re having a baby, but sorry, you’re really not. Ask any midwife and she’s likely to tell you
that when she sees a detailed birth plan, all intervention- and medication-free
she thinks ‘Uh-oh. Here comes trouble.’

I remember the moment when the midwife rolled an empty
cot into the labour room the night my first son was born—five weeks early, not
part of the plan. For a second I
thought, ‘What’s that for? Oh! She really thinks I’m going to have an actual baby to put in there by the
end of this night.’ It was probably at
that point that I realised there was now no way out, no choice, no power left
for me to exercise. There was no option
of saying ‘Right, I’ve had enough, I’m off home.’ Though plenty of women do say that, ask any
midwife. No—one way or another, this
baby was about to be born.

We agree to hand ourselves over to the care of others,
to put ourselves at the mercy of events, to relinquish control for a mixture of
reasons. Because we no longer have much
choice, maybe, and for the sake of what lies beyond. We go through labour and childbirth because
there will be something to put in the cot when it’s all over. A new life.
There is no other way. We have
the pacemaker fitted or the gall bladder taken out, in order to gain a new
life. There is no other way.

This resonates for me when I think about Christ’s
passion, his passivity, his allowing himself to be handed over. Was it for the sake of new life, because
there was no other way? Why was there no
other way? Maybe ‘suffering the cross to
happen to him’ was an antidote to something?
Not a homoeopathic cure, treating like with like, but a cancelling out,
a neutralising, an undoing of something.
What might that something be?
What is the polar opposite to Christ’s passion?

There’s a hint in one of the very earliest Christian
hymns written. It’s found in a letter to
the church at Philippi: ‘Have this mind among
yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,who, though he was inthe form of God, did not count equality with
Goda thing to be grasped,butemptied himself, by taking the form of aservant,being born in the likeness of men.And being found in human form, he humbled
himself bybecoming
obedient to the point of death,even
death on a cross.’

It is this ‘grasping at equality with God’ that offers a way
in, I think. The word suggests a kind of
robber-like grabbing. Plundering. Think back to that summer of looting, when
people seemed to lose the plot in a fever of aggravated shopping. Or else consider that little kink in our
nature that makes us go, Pah! when a friend is promoted. The child in us that protests ‘How come SHE
gets the big piece?’ Or experimentally
stomps on ants for no good reason, other than because we can, to see what
happens, to check what it feels like to exercise that kind of power. That doesn’t really want the house, the
lover, the children, so much as not
want the other person to have them. The urge
that ends up, writ large, right across human history: the Scramble for Africa,
Lebensraum, genocide, the blithe ransacking of the planet for short term
profit.

The opposite to this kind of Me first! snatch-and-grabbiness—the
antidote to this, according to the hymn in Philippians, is a
self-emptying. Abandoning godhead with its
phenomenal cosmic power, in favour of—to quote Disney’s genie—the itty-bitty
living space of the human body. I
sometimes wonder how that must have felt.
For all our sense of the human
body’s potency, its powerful agency, and capacity to do things and act upon the
world, surely for Christ it was the first step on that downward path to utter
powerlessness. It began with him
divested of godhead, utterly dependent, a babe in arms, totally entrusted to
flawed and finite human hands. And it ended
the same way: with him putting himself back in our hands, suffering death, even
death on the cross.

Behind this talk of ‘grasping at equality with God’
lurk our great fore-father and mother in Eden.
Adam and Eve, taking a long look at the fruit of the forbidden tree,
checking nobody was about in the garden, and making a grab for it. The chance to be like God. The shortcut to omnipotence. To godhead.

It still has the power to provoke panic, this
finiteness. This creatureliness. Humans begin helpless in this life, and rage,
rage against the dying of the light. Fighting that descent back into
helplessness again. Doesn’t it feel a
bit like an affront, to retire, to age, to become dependent on others, at the
mercy of public transport and the NHS? Nobody
wants to become a nuisance, a burden, reliant on the good will of friends and
relatives, fitting in with their schedules, in need of hand-outs, trapped in a
culture of dependency. No, I will not
go gentle into that good night if I can help it. I’ll be obliged to die one day, but on my own
terms, I’ll be in control to the very last if possible, thank you very much.

Easy to forget that you’re only mortal. Especially when you’re young. Crash helmets, seat belts, speed limits—who
need them? I see the youngsters tear past
me, their laughter and shouts trailing after them—pretty much as I did when I
was twenty—not believing in my own mortality, expect as a vague concept. The
way I believed in Russia, without ever expecting to go there.

Maybe this explains the urge to grasp at youth, as
though that were the fruit of the tree?
Youth, with all its connotations of power, of being in control of our
destiny? Fight those signs of ageing! But who am I kidding? Things are only going in one direction. The choice is between wrinkles and being
already dead. This is the stark message
of Ash Wednesday and the ceremony of the imposition of ashes. That cold smear of ash placed on your
forehead, and the words: ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall
return.’ Remember you are dust. Remember.
Remember.

Those are the words spoken to Adam and Eve, when they
were driven out of the garden, snarled up and out of kilter their creator and
the creation and with themselves. ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you; and
you shall eat the plants of the field.In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto
the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thouart, and unto dust shalt thou
return.’Sometimes
it still feels like that: panicking, endlessly looking for the road home, the
way back in, grasping, grasping for power, for answers, for control, raging,
fighting against the dying of the light.
Still homesick for the garden.
And another chance. Another life.

There was another garden. Gethsemane.
And another Adam. The choice was
still there: to seize earthly power, muster the zealot freedom fighters—weren’t
they ready with their swords? Palm
Sunday was still ringing in their ears.
Here comes the king! Blessed is
he who comes in the name of the Lord! A
word from Jesus—that’s all they were waiting for! Then call down heavenly reinforcements—let
God reveal his power, his mighty arm, and put this mess right.

The agony, the blood, sweat and tears of that decision
in Gethsemane. There was another way, but
that doorway was so small, so low, that the only path through meant the
stripping away of everything, it meant being utterly crushed, destroyed. And all the time, the possibility of cosmic power
still hung there, like the fruit of the tree, ripe for the picking—was he not
entitled to it? If the son of God is not
entitled to exercise power, then who is?

That early hymn suggests an answer: ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is
yours in Christ Jesus,who, though he was inthe form of God, did not count equality with
Goda thing to be grasped,butemptied himself, by taking the form of aservant,being born in the likeness of men.And being found in human form, he humbled
himself bybecoming
obedient to the point of death,even
death on a cross.’

‘If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!’
the passers by taunted Christ. Prove
it. Prove you are who you claim to
be. Prove your power. Act.
Do something. Don’t just hang
there, don’t just take it. But the temptation to treat like with like, to trump
power with still more power, that temptation was seen off in those forty days in
the Wilderness. And renounced once again in Gethsemane. It was going to take more than a spectacular
coming down from the cross backed by twelve legions of angels to put this one
right. There was no shortcut. No other way to unkink that bias towards power-grabbing
that undid—and still undoes—our race. No
other way to mend it all and put us right.
Fix the broken juddering heart, take out all that gall. And give us new life. No other way, than by just hanging there and
taking it. Every last bit of it.

Saturday, 22 March 2014

My younger son wandered in to pester me the other day, while I was working.

'What are you doing?'

'I'm proofreading a novel I wrote before you were born.'

My son is 20. Yes, it really is that long since I was working on Angels and Men. The novel is set in the early 80s and it reads like a period piece now. All those students smoking in their bedrooms! No student loans; very little binge drinking; no concept that one might simply 'get over' some people being gay.

The reason I've had to revisit the hallowed corridors of Jesus College and Coverdale Hall is because SPCK are reissuing Angels and Men this July. Here's the new cover:

Isn't that wonderful? It's a watercolour by Ian Scott Massie and I see that I am quite right to like it:"At last - someone in the North who can paint!" Brian Sewell http://www.ianscottmassie.com/

The temptation, while proofreading, was to start editing as well. I resisted, because it would seem churlish to tinker with the novel of what is, essentially, a different and much younger woman. All I've done is correct a few minor errors that have always bugged me. But if that younger me were now in my MA workshop, I'd have some advice to give, believe me. This ought to be encouraging, though. It suggests I'm now better at my craft than I was two decades back.

With hindsight, I'm now profoundly grateful that my editor suggested cuts to the original typescript. She felt its length might be 'a little daunting to readers and reviewers'. This was an example of exquisite tact. I can see now that she was saving me from myself. I reckon between 10% and 15% ended up on the cutting room floor. Most first novels need to be taken firmly in hand. Be prepared for this, if you are currently writing one yourself. It's counter-intuitive to the sensitive soul, but the best way to improve your writing is to take stuff out, not put more stuff in.On a happier note, I find that on re-reading Angels and Men, I still have a soft spot for my characters. Although that Andrew Jacks is a right nob, isn't he?

Catherine Fox

About Me

Author, and lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. REALMS OF GLORY is my newest book. Before that I wrote three novels, a memoir about my quest to get a judo black belt, a teen fantasy novel WOLF TIDE, and a series of humorous books about the Church of England. I live in Sheffield.